Major Labels in Favor of P2P… Sort of…
Back in March of this year, Warner Music Group brought on digital music guru Jim Griffin to consult on how to combat illegal file sharing and recoup some revenue from an ever depleting amount of CD sales. 
Jim Griffin is leading the charge for an ISP fee to be rolled into each ISP client’s bill in order to compensate record labels being victimized by illiegal P2P downloading services.Griffin’s primary proposal involved rolling in a fee (a pretty reasonable $5 per month) with every ISP service that would serve as compensation to content providers (read: record labels). In turn, internet users would have unlimited access to digital music through their choice of P2P clients like bit torrent or LimeWire. While that hasn’t yet happened at large, a smaller version of it called “Choruss” (also championed by Griffin) is very close to being in play on several college campuses around the nation. More on that later, but for now let’s talk about the larger ISP-wide rendition.
Critics of the program have argued that such a structure would be extortion, to the effect that you’re essentially paying a record label not to sue you when you download their songs. I think that’s a bit extreme, and at least appreciate that Warner is making a concerted effort to figure out how we can make music profitable in the digital age (without litigation of course).
I have two main qualms with the system as described:
1) File quality assurance. With P2P clients, the file you get is always hit and miss. I remember bands that used to re-tag their songs as being by different artists in order to try and swindle people into downloading their music in an effort to create a fan base. For example, if I had a new and unknown shoe-gazer band, I might tag my song as being by My Bloody Valentine or Smashing Pumpkins in order to get people to download it and hear my music, when they were infact under the impression that they were downloading some unreleased Pumpkins tune. You’re also not guaranteed any type of bitrate, meaning you could spend time hunting down a song only to find that you just downloaded a clipping, monophonic, bit-crushed version of a live bootleg recording. Lastly in this category is how to enforce that only music gets downloaded instead of software, video, etc. In addition to record labels and entertainment groups, do you also need buy in from any digital media product provider out there?
2) Imposition. I’m not too keen on the idea of the $5 fee being put on my bill each month regardless of if I use P2P services or not. Essentially, you’re forcing the masses to absorb the costs from the actions of a growing, but still relatively small, few. Even with the fee, I’m not likely to get my music on a P2P client simply because of the file QA problems mentioned above.
Now onto Choruss. Griffin’s OneHouse Digital registered the domain for Choruss.com earlier this year, though there’s nothing up yet. College campuses have been chastised as the most prolific abusers of copyright. When I was in college, one of my suitemates got hit with a subpoena regarding some content he downloaded on P2P client Kazzaa. The University stepped in and took the heat for him, but then installed a lot of watch dog software on his PC and limited his net usage on campus. Some universities have really gone to bat for their students, like UCSC, actually winning a case against the RIAA claiming that they should not be obligated to release students’ personal data.
Enter the Choruss. Choruss applies Griffin’s ISP-fee-based model on college campuses. A small fee, rolled into each student’s tuition, would go to record labels in exchange for a covenant by the labels not to bring litigation against the university’s students. A nonprofit tech advocate Educause has been presenting the unlimited music plan to colleges accross the country using a really cheesy (but informative) PowerPoint presentation:
Nice.
We live in an age where people essentially choose whether or not to pay for music based on their own moral compass. The only thing that will get the music freeloaders to pay for their music might be some sort of enforced fee like Griffin proposes. Let’s see how Choruss pans out, and what tweaks it might need. Record labels are drowning, and we’ve been standing around describing the water for the better part of a decade. Griffin’s proposition may be the first step in finding some little blow-up orange floaties.
Tweet
Leave a Reply
